Printers, such as black and white and color laser printers, are used for a wide range of tasks, from personal home use to use by the largest corporations and governments. Print quality has steadily risen as cost has decreased, and printers are now commonly used for tasks previously performed only by commercial printers.
However, monitoring and controlling print costs, almost always a critical task, has remained difficult. Managing print costs has in fact become more complex, as most printers now provide a number of different settings. These settings, such as resolution, print density, or paper type, are typically configurable either using the printer control panel or through software executing on a computer connected to the printer. Printer settings affect the print costs as well as the print quality. Some settings are even labeled in terms of relative cost, such as “Economy Mode,” rather than identifying the actual print characteristics to be changed. Many printer settings are thus an attempt to enable the user to manage print costs and usage of resources such as toner and paper.
Unfortunately, printers currently available do not directly help users to manage print costs using printer settings. Users are aware only that they should save money if they reduce print quality by changing the print settings. This does not provide much useful information to a user who needs to balance print quality with cost, such as when selecting the best print quality to use to meet a budget, or to decide between in-house printing and commercial printing for given print jobs.